Commentary on 'Good to Great' by Jim Collins

Those who accomplish, accomplish but do not follow any formula. It means accomplishments are unconscious.

Hence the several proverbs that unfailing accomplishment is not around the corner.

The capacity to accomplish rises with increasing skills, industry, energy, determination, value, subtle perseverance, but nowhere in the world is there a knowledge that guarantees it.

Up to 99% or even 99.99% is within the range of human potential, not 100%.

For practical purposes, 99.99% or even 99% is more than enough. One can congratulate oneself if two out of five of his enterprises are successful. That is what a Tamil proverb says.

The question is whether 100% guaranteed success is ever possible at least theoretically. If so, what is that theory?

To guarantee that, the potential must be not a 200 or 300% possibility, but a never-ending creative possibility.

In recorded "history", no one has enjoyed it except Lord Krishna.

But, it can be thought that each time he contrived the successful end by a false stratagem.

Mother's devotees whether they practise or not, have all seen this power more than once.

Jim Collins describes companies as GOOD and GREAT.

To him, those companies that are in the limelight are Good. They are Sears, GE, Coca-Cola, etc., companies that have risen high and stayed there for over thirty or fifty years.

There are other criteria.

Jim, in his popular book, looks at them from an investment point of view.

He shows 28 companies of his study can be classified as Great, i.e. they enjoyed substantial success. They became, he says, Great from being Good.

He has enumerated over a hundred traits about their CEOs that enabled them to become Great from being Good.

His findings being empirical, the results can only be incidental, not inevitable.

Logic says that empirical findings or findings from below can lead to ANY conclusions, not necessarily compelling to be right.

This is a domain where giant intellectuals have gone absurdly astray.

The mightiest intellect earth has ever witnessed has declared that Self can disintegrate overlooking the spiritual fact that Self existed prior to the creation of the Mind that undertakes this analysis.

Shankara who excelled him in intellect, if not in spirit, by a similar process ‘abolished' life on earth.

The findings of Jim are the most valuable for management in the sense they are far more systematic than Drucker or Tom Peter. Peter's is an inspiring principle of freedom. It is more an inspiration than a finding. He evoked the greatest response form the market, as it is an evolutionary principle. Nor can Peter tell us how it can be utilised.

Drucker spoke out of experience rather than out of study.

Jim has undertaken a systematic study, the largest ever so undertaken.

But his researches are confined to physical, material facts.

He talks of values seriously. In the nature of things, values do not lend themselves to a rigorous study of enumeration or even quantification.

At best, attitudes, strategies, values can only be indicative.

His method being incomplete, his findings even when they are right and useful, can only be inconclusive.

How can a method be conclusive and fully valid?

The embodied being is made of four parts and their subtle, causal planes.

Any method that does not exclude any of these planes and is fully valid in each of these planes is so conclusive and valid.

When a man speaks, there is his speech, voice, tone, pronunciation, accent, emphasis, thoughts and subtle thoughts, etc. We go by his voice and tone more than his words and thoughts. Voice and tone are the subtle parts.

Whether it is Marriott Hotels or Saravana Bhavan, we witness an infinite expansion. It is sustained. Infosys is like that. In these ventures, one can see the FULLNESS I speak of here. Such a fullness is indicated by the expansive cheerfulness of the atmosphere that is flawlessly smooth and perfectly wholesome. It is a moment everyone is positive.

At such moments, success is granted at two levels. When the success is at the level of consciousness, the work will be completed to a t. At the level of substance, the project will expand like Marriott and maintain it over the decades.

On another dimension, the work will be expanding in the trade or nation.

What to do is the first question. How to do is the final question.

Obviously, we are not speaking about routine works. We consider new works that have a fragrance of change, growth as well as an element of development, if not evolution.

New works demand new attitudes.

They touch the core of personality - one's sensitivities. Should that TOUCH be positive, receptive, expansive, it works and releases vast, uncontrollable energies.

In the event of its being negative, resistant, contracting, it spoils the work equally releasing vast amounts of uncontrollable NEGATIVE energies.

Accomplishment requires the one and not the other.

Total absence of negative attitudes is essential.

The presence of all positive attitudes ensures great accomplishments.

Even one negative attitude present will have the potential of cancelling the work fully.

The presence of positive attitudes yields results proportionately.

The presence of all positive attitudes in full intensity breaks out of the finite into the Infinite.

Such a presence in consciousness ensures its success - Good. The same presence in substance ensures Good turning into Great.

Jim talks about the CEO only. What the CEO achieves is limited - perhaps Good - but what the company achieves is unlimited - Great.

To transfer the attitude of the CEO to the company is an entirely different work from that of the CEO.

It depends on the values at all levels. Work values, Time values, Space values, Energy values, people values are to be developed at the various levels of management.

Values handed down by the management to the executives and staff will achieve work, not release energy.

Values developed by the people in work with an eye on the Energy and Time are lasting.

Organisation - systems and procedures - will reconcile people's attitudes and work requirement.

Great companies need to develop such systems at all levels out of the initiative of the employees.

Indicators

Every such system reveals its efficiency by an index.

Time is indicated by quickness.

Space is measurable.

Energy is shown by the buoyancy of people.

Harmony is seen by the absence of complaints and presence of the sense of ease - an absence of tension.

Efficiency is seen in productivity and absence of waste.

High achievement is seen by the quality of work now and the longevity of such organisational health.

Profit indicates the overall efficiency.

Extent of courtesy ensures the highest quality of the product.

Reception reveals presence of courtesy.

Absence of theft announces honesty of the atmosphere.

Ungrudging cooperation is the index of fundamental cooperation.

Presence of one act of self-giving is a great good symptom while its widespread presence is the guarantee of non-stop growth in the future.

Stress on service brings out growth of profit.

Ready reply to correspondence shows the alertness.

Securing past information is a sure index of office management.

Settling retirement benefits reflects the national culture.

The way in which minor disputes are settled is ONE great index of overall human efficiency.

Public approbation is an unfailing indicator.

Unegoistic, silent, quick, generous, alert action steadied makes for a good company. The same in substance is a great company.

Indicators can be graded and the company can thus be evaluated by the grade.

To make the personal endowment organisational, the CEO must be non-egoistic and impersonal in action.

It is done by the authority replaced by freedom.

Efficiency in freedom is everlasting company culture.

Absence of fear and suspicion indicates the presence of freedom.

Bribing the officers will become laxity in execution.

Pampering the public will lead to believing the illusion.

Short term gains will generate long term problems.

Quixotic management is seen in perverse labour.

Lack of work inside is unreasonable demands outside.

Start with yourself.

See the infinite expansion.

Do it in your department.

Duplicate it in other departments voluntarily.

Wait till the general atmosphere is rich.

At the appropriate time introduce it everywhere.

Allow it to gain momentum.

Avail of the prevailing freedom fully.

Use the authority within limits.

Crown it by a dexterous TOUCH of the incomprehensible.

We witness this phenomenon of accomplishment in daily work. Only that it is in Time when a function is completed to a ‘t'. It is in Timelessness when the phenomenon continues in his life. We call it luck. Rarely it is in Simultaneous Time, as Indian Freedom that spread over all of Asia and the world.

The theory of this accomplishment is Process of Creation described between chapters 13 and 24 of The Life Divine.

Know the theory, apply it to practice, integrate it, you will get the feel of the whole. Have a few things in mind and try to see them there.

- The Unknowable formulates itself to the human consciousness and disappears.

- When the Brahman turns into Sat, Chit, Supermind, Mind, Life and Matter

Matter is Brahman,

Life is Brahman, etc., i.e.

Brahman at each stage becomes that and is still capable of withdrawing into it.

- When a man starts a movement, he is the inspiration, he is the movement, he is the result. He does not simply create those results. He is the Result. That is the key or one of the essential keys.

- Time is Ever-Present, Space is a point, God is Man and his work. The Process of creation is a successive movement in Time; it is a meeting point of Time and Timelessness.

Mind, Time, ego, finite, surface are the elements that keep us small.

It is seen as self-importance of selfishness and all the other traits of these five aspects. Their number is legion. Some are suspicion, greed, inferiority inverting into superiority, unseemly haste to appropriate the entire opportunity to oneself, total intolerance that even a small part of the gain reaches another, shedding the pretence of manners to unleash the ugly, seamy side of one's own inner subconscious deficiencies, desire to cancel the ideal from insideÄ, the personal version of the thirty negative traits to be shed mentioned in The Mother, the onerous effort to rise from nowhere and walk into the evolutionary mainstream, the incompatibility of the nerves with the vastness and newness of the opportunity, the consequences of Jnana kanda splitting from karma kanda, the gap between the Force and consciousness, the Himalayan effort to shift from concentration to consecration, the adventure of entering the subliminal, the breaking of the eternal inertia of Matter, the impossible effort of the creature Mind becoming Divine Mind, the immeasurable energy needed to universalise the ego, the reversal of involution into evolution, the ascent into the cosmic consciousness, the evolutionary effort of the part becoming the whole, the conception of the whole as something greater than the sum of the parts, the energy needed to bring Time and Timelessness to co-exist; in sum, to desire to enjoy the taste of Ignorance.

In an accomplishment there are grades. Each can be defined and assigned to a plane.

- The least is the accomplishment of a work after several failures. To complete a work at one go straight is a physical accomplishment or an accomplishment at the physical plane. Even this can have grades. It may be passing an exam, having a good harvest or completing a foreign tour. The best will be building a house.

- The accomplishment can rise vertically to the vital, mental, etc. while it is possible for it to extend to the subtle and causal.

Vertical growth in building a house of a small size may be its location being in an influential neighbourhood.

Its rising to the mental level can be explained as bringing in some resourceful engineering or architectural items.

Subtle enrichment will be the cosy residence it offers and causal dimension will be the total success of the work the inmates attempt.

- All surviving citizens DO accomplish at some level or other.

- The work can be in either of the three dimensions of time. Completion of work in the contemplated time is to be in the plane of Time. Very quick completion may be approaching in character that of the plane of Timelessness.

- While everyone accomplishes in time, the rare few accomplish in Timelessness either once or successively. It is called luck.

- The rarest of the rare have at least once witnessed work getting completed in Simultaneous Time. My theme is this is possible, at least once, to anyone.

Examples for this can be easily given from politics. It happens when they ride an evolutionary wave of social development -- Indira's election in 1980, Kamaraj's eminence in the sixties, DMK's victory at the polls in 1967.In other fields there are example such as rising traffic in Indian roads, growth of bank deposits, etc.

For one to taste the phenomenon of Good to Great, he must start with good. When it continues its stability, it becomes great. When the outer atmosphere is entirely positive, without one flaw, any work enters the character of GOOD. This is possible for anyone as the outer is under the control of the inner. No one can say that he cannot have his inner condition of a work entirely positive and flawless. That work will straight away enter the Simultaneous Time. Some small examples:

- One who entered a local elocution competition winning the prize and successively rising to many further levels.

- Trying to launch a new product, he finds the market responding in an ever increasing fashion.

- The failure of Jane's marriage with Bingley when reversed led to three weddings one of which was an inconceivable alliance.

- Learning the techniques of sales, one's business rises from a few lakhs to four crores of rupees in six months.

- An unegoistic silent attitude that works quickly shedding smallness, if accompanied by a steady poise will accomplish this much.

If one does accomplish this much, I can call it the UNIT of accomplishment in some fashion.

The UNIT possesses the entire method. Nothing more is necessary. Add energy of aspiration to it, the work expands.

Organise that energy, the accomplishment extends as far as the organisation extends.

Bring in strength of will or strength of substance, the work gains in seriousness and substance.

Saturate at the subtle level, you will witness expansion.

Extend it to the causal plane, failure will disappear.

In the human body as the child grows we witness the physical growth, vital stability, mental organisation between 15 and 25. Beyond 25, the cycle repeats at higher and wider levels, if growth continues. It will then pass through the stages of development and evolution.

Examine the 28 companies Jim Collins talks about, all these stages can be seen there.

Anyone who creates the above UNIT of accomplishment and successfully extends it to higher stages (Good to Great) however humble his walk of life is, can SEE all this fully.

Mother's atmosphere offers all this ipso facto to any devotee. The first key is the creation of the UNIT. The second key is the maintenance of the subtle, causal factors - expansive cheerfulness all round unwounded by offensive vibrations. In the measure ONE is capable of it inwardly, the outer circumstances will be totally under his control.

Any discipline will vastly benefit when it is comprehensive. There are various ways, almost a dozen or even a score of ways to be comprehensive. A comprehensive method becomes Perfect for the individual when it is exhaustive.To exhaust the resources of the method is one way.To exhaust one's own energies is another way.Perfection in his context is best achieved when he exhausts his efforts while at his very best.

─ To take a look around of people and see them as our reflection is comprehensiveness.

─ It is better done when attempted inwardly.

To evaluate one on human values for the purposes of this discipline is another.

Patience may place you at point No. 32 out of 100.

The list of patience, comprehension, rationality, pleasantness may have only 20 or 25 on it.

─ To evaluate our past against an ideal is a method.

─ Human relationships with those around us is another readily available SCALE.

─ The various themes of The Life Divine (about 100 to 200) will lend themselves readily as an instrument of discipline.

─ As this is an experiment and not a study, energies will be quickly and readily exhausted fully.

─ There may be none left for anything. Such points are pointers.

The purpose is to create that UNIT of accomplishment and to raise us to the maximum possible level of progress, NOT to be lingering on any method however sacred it is.

There are men who are frustrated saying, "Nothing that I do becomes a success." We know about a score of such attitudes. It is not our business to show them the truth of their position. As it has come to us, it reflects our inner mood. We must be able to understand it in the light of our highest ideal. The following column will tell us the position of our ideal.

1. Nothing that I do is a success

1. I insist on my pet ways of failure.

2. No one helps me.

2. You are one whom no one should help in their sensible moods.

3. I have never been treated as a human being.

3. I have a subconscious knowledge that I am subhuman.

4. My most trusted friend betrayed me.

4. I am capable of similar betrayal.

5. No one has the courtesy to thank me.

5. I am a thankless person.

6. No one appreciates me.

6. I am consciously unappreciative. It is my policy.

7. Even to receive help, people bargain.

7. I am vain to offer help to undeserving persons.

8. People have always turned against me.

8. I have no common sense in human relationships.

9. I do not know what to do with myself.

9. I want everyone to obey me.

10. No one is rational.

10. I am the most irrational human being.

I am not trying to exhaust the list nor am I going to explain these statements, as they are obvious.

It is possible to take a life, trace it fully from all these angles and find at the end the comprehensive method is comprehensively explained. That is what I would prefer to do if my arguments do not carry me elsewhere.

One purpose of mine is to show that this very high evolutionary accomplishment is within anyone's reach. No one, whatever he is now, is constitutionally prohibited from this.What makes this possible or not is his own choice. Stated differently:

─ Anyone can achieve anything.

─ Man's choice has the ultimate power.

─ Human choice is the powerful force guiding the course of humanity.

─ Man loves what he is so fully that his identification with it is total - Taste of Ignorance.

─ Indulging in the present is irresistible.

─ Man is lazy.

─ Nature is too powerful when She has decided to enjoy the infinity before her in leisure.

─ One becomes what he aspires for.

─ Evolution needs a residue which some should supply.

─ OBSTINACY is infinite.

─ In a nation that is evolutionarily leading the world, those who are below her minimum level are socially as well as physically immature.

In creating a UNIT of accomplishment, one can perceive it has several dimensions and from each dimension one sees principles, strategies, attitudes, power, qualities, properties. For the UNIT to come into existence or for that to emerge as a natural development, one must know the conditions to be fulfilled from each of these aspects.

As the UNIT is to be a unit of the highest accomplishment - in the Simultaneous Time plane - all these conditions must tend to fulfil those conditions. Each of those conditions must be of that level and of that character. E.g. Energy released must be of the maximum quantity. Its quality must be of the level of the UNIT to emerge.

The principle must be one that links the UNIT and the final accomplishment in view.

Attitudes can be selfish, selfless, self-giving. Even in self-giving it can rise to Self-giving and can be at any intermediate level.

As the electric power varies in voltage, wattage, ampere, the power of social accomplishment varies in its intensity, amplitude, character and quality. Here too, the final product and the initial effort must have essential things in common. A generous appreciation cannot be delivered by an offensive tone of a scowling face. Appreciation needs a tone of soft sweetness that expands the hearer. The tone is ultimate and true.

The voice and thought must be in harmony. They must tend towards integration.

The marvel is each act occurring by the Divine Will, devoid of the trace of evil, informed of the joy of self-existence in Simultaneous Time. The world has always been like that. We now have to discover it. To see even ONE act, for one split second is to peep into the Supramental plane. That one breakthrough enables him to permanently enter into that plane.

- The statements of The Life Divine, the disciplines of the Mother, the commonsense of the world, the rules of accomplishment, the anecdotes of history and literature, the significant events of today's market gossip, what preoccupies your deepest subconscious and disturbs your sensitivities of life and mind, the landmarks of your own life are suitable material to acquire the peep.

- A popular book like Jim Collins, reviewed according to HIM to find out what in the population responds to what in the descent and why is a consummate inquiry.

- One's relationship with his intimates, with the spouse that attracts or repels are points of value. One is subconsciously close to the spouse, super-consciously close to the ideal. He is the gap between them. To know the lowest terms of that gap in terms of the highest term is wisdom.

The Life Divine lays out several poles of life:

- Contradictions and complements

- Matter and Spirit

- Subconscient and Superconscient

- Universal and Individual

- Impersonal and Personal

- Involution and Evolution

- Affirmation and Negation

- Birth and Death

- Knowledge and Ignorance

- Surface and depth

- Surface and Subliminal

- Austerity and Enjoyment

- Conscious and unconscious

- Silence and Activity

- Light and Darkness

- Unity and Division

- Cosmic creation and universal existence

- Original creation and mentally objective world

- Division and Aggregation

- Knowledge and Ignorance.

Between these two poles, we are situated somewhere. To know where is knowledge. In each of these dualities, we have such a place. To know where I am between knowledge and Ignorance is not the same as where I am between unity and division. I am united with my family, divided from those who are outside the family. To know this in terms of knowledge means I understand that my family is myself. That is my knowledge. It is a knowledge of Selfishness.

To find our placement between each of these polarities is to know ourselves from as many dimensions. It is a multi-dimensional knowledge. To integrate these pieces of knowledge is inner integration of knowledge. This is one strand of several facets of integration.

Outer integration of knowledge;

Inner integration of feelings and later sensations;

The inner and outer integrate in Simultaneous Time.

It is worthwhile exhausting this list at all the four levels of being and adding the dimensions of inner, outer and their integrated existence. Such an exercise will open the higher infinities of consciousness to the lower infinities of our triplicity.

The experiment eminently lends itself to be practised in a company. One can start anywhere. It will lead to everywhere. Only that it is very difficult, as saying stop asking, move to stop thinking and then to stop feeling and sensing. For one who has all the urges to ask, it will take sixty years to stop asking. It happens by life refusing to give. Even there it takes a long time. But this can be achieved by a higher knowledge accepted by our higher centres. It is the power of knowledge.

Knowledge has the power to make a man do things which he will take years to do. Knowledge has this power as it belongs to a higher mental plane. Mind itself is a higher plane to the vital. Therefore to use KNOWLEDGE with advantage is good.

There is goodness, sweetness, selflessness, generosity in men. Out of this long list of qualities, one or two may be in us in a marked measure. When its intensity is greater than a certain limit, it has the power to protect us in a critical moment from the negative vibration of betrayal, hostility, etc. That limit is a limit of our personality. When a good vibration is pronounced enough to equal or exceed our personality strength, that will surely protect us from hostility at a crisis. Such people are called Good men. That goodness is seen as humility. The determination of such a man will achieve. All those above rules will act for that man according to his goodness, not according to the laws of life. To him, the creation of the UNIT accomplishment is eminently possible. Some ways of life with respect to that UNIT:

- In fortuitous circumstances, it gets created. It is easily lost.

- Capacities in one create it as long as he relies on faith. It breaks down when he shifts his reliance to his capacity.

- Mother invariably creates it.Our callous indifference destroys it or allows it to be destroyed.

- Rarely is it consciously created by faith.

- It has a vast chance of being everlasting. It lasts as long as faith lasts.

- The best way to create it is in conscious faith.

- Once it is created, the best way to preserve it is to build it up to greater heights.

- All our efforts are to get a glimpse of the Marvel. Once the Marvel is glimpsed, WORK starts on a regular basis either in life or yoga. The rules are the same for both; variations will be in the colouring or in the shades.

- This is for those who want accomplishment.

This is NOT for one who affirms himself or his personality.

This is also NOT for anyone who seeks the affirmation of anything other than WORK.

Accomplishment is for the work, not for the person.

A greater accomplishment is greater than work.

What is greater than work is the creative impulse.

- Wisdom lies in Man fitting himself to work, not to the society. Work is a greater ideal than society.

- Only those who have the urge to exceed themselves will achieve. It is for those who have the call.

The call is the call of the Divine.

If there is no call, it is better for him to take up a calling.

No calling the world knows will respond to this call.

If idealists are needed for the world to progress, other men of different calling are necessary to fill up the basement of the edifice. The choice is ours.

Jim says Great companies think less of great technologies. Technology is a great power, maybe the greatest of powers, but it is the power of Matter organised by an idea of the Mind.

Physical is the lowest power.

Spirit is the highest power known.

Now Sri Aurobindo has shown Supermind excels it in power.

Muscle is the instrument of the physical power.

Men relating to each other is vital power.

An idea such as using a tool is mental power.

A tool itself is the creation of mind in matter.

Men working together is human vital power.

It has the rudimentary element of organisation there, i.e. the power of mind.

Organisation of work is power of mind in the vital.

Organisation of men is vital power moved by the mind.

The usefulness of a power depends not on its level but on its appropriateness to the occasion.

Technology now rules for over centuries.

The Supramental power, if it reveals, reveals for a split second.

Apart form the five parts of the person, there are subtle and causal parts.

These forces do not act entirely on their own.

Always they combine.

An organisation of pickpockets uses the subtle sensations in a major way.

In doing a shed, the mental part is limited, but the execution is mostly physical vital.

You see a worker up on the top of the shed fixing coconut leaves having a bunch of string on his hip.

A bird doing the same work, or even man in earlier days, will come down for the string for each leaf.

Now mind tells him to take all the strings, and keep them on his hip so that he could save the climbing each time. It is an idea.

It is technology where mind rules over the body.

To classify every human advance so far under these heads and under these combinations is possible.

But at a given Time, ONE habit rules.

It will be decided by the period.

Someone asked whoever heard of an idea paid for.

An Englishman said to pay for ideas is an American habit.

Unless a new discovery becomes of commercial value, it will not reach the entire population.

The fast spread of education in India now is due to the fact that running schools is profitable.

Just now technology rules because this is a period where the physical mind has become productive.

Management will be accepted by the world as a useful method far more valuable than technology when Mind is more valued than matter. Jim's statement indicates that.

Jim says remove the wrong people, get the right people. This certainly will make for efficiency. It is the efficiency of a lower plane or the plane where we live. As Jim has enormous facts at his disposal, the value of his statement, the Truth behind it, can be verified.

Getting the right people is to execute the work on hand efficiently.

Making the existing people RIGHT is to raise our plane of work to the maximum present potential of all people.

Everyone can be raised to that level.

The question is, how to raise them?

All other strategies apart, the aspiration to raise the level of the consultants - an attitude of self-giving - has that power.

Anyway, such a method is with us.

Jim's method and our method are not just different.

Jim readies the company to execute the work efficiently. We prepare the employees to the highest possible potentials.

For each of Jim's great methods, we have an alternate one. It is not a better one.

It is one that will make the Quality of our work better.

Jim organises work.

We reorganise people.

People carry all the power the world needs.

Work will release all the power it needs.

Jim limits himself to work.

We expand till the end of the world.

Work releases physical-vital energy.

World and life release vital-vital energy.

As people are developed, the vital-vital energies are mentalised to that extent.

Obviously this has a vaster, greater potential.

People lend themselves to change better than work.

Compared with people, work is inert.

Work is live to the extent of Life.

Man is live to the extent his mind is willing to receive and develop.

To see the variation of our approach from that of Jim's is a perspective that is far more valuable than all one can learn from Jim or from us.

Hit adversity on the head and emerge stronger.

Adversity is the tangled reverse of unprecedented opportunity. It is opportunity in ignorance and darkness.

Remove them, a greater opportunity will reveal to you.

This is a practical presentation of the idea that hate is inverted Love.

One can do this and emerge into great victory, but one who knows the process of adversity changing into prosperity will possess that knowledge forever.

That knowledge will permanently prevent any further adversity from presenting itself to you.

It is worth one's while to study the grades between simple contrary to complex perversity.

Each level of it will vary by a shade in the strategy to deal with adversity.

The first and best is to meet it happily with the knowledge that it is an opportunity of prosperity.

The increasing determination in persistence giving increasing energy indicates the right attitude.

That energy rising to enjoyment is the final victory.

Energy becomes enjoyment through experience.

Energy is of the vital. Experience is physical.

Vital energy active in the plane of physicality gives birth to enjoyment.

cf. His statement it is Matter that gives fleeting Bliss permanence to become Delight.

Ignorance and darkness are to be removed from a company.

Absence of organisation is ignorance of work movement.

Unpunctual behaviour is ignorance of Time.

Clumsiness in work or in things is ignorance of orderliness and regularity.

Not writing accounts on time is ignorance of the value of attention to money.

Bargain is ignorance of Money flow and its rules.

Delay is ignorance of the way energy issues from work.

Loud voice is ignorance of what we say.

Also it is ignorance of the energy expended in speech.

Repetition of speech is ignorance of effective communication.

Asking a miserly client to pay more is ignorance of the power of sensitivities of organised smallness.

Gossiping is ignorance of the value of secrecy.

Selfishness is ignorance of the enormous power of self-giving that changes the finite to the infinite.

Meanness is ignorance of the joy of affection or generosity.

Sluggishness is ignorance of the power that wells up from active dynamism.

Postponement is ignorance of how events respond to ready attention.

Tale bearing is ignorance of the power of goodness.

Ignorance of the other man's point of view is blind darkness of selfish smallness.

5 levels of leadership:

Leadership, as everything else, rests on a rationale.

Here we restrict ourselves to corporate leadership that can build a company to enduring greatness.

The difference between corporate leadership and leadership in general is that it should effectively function within the structure of the company which means the employees and their organisation.

It is obvious leadership is built on excessive personal energy to start with and crowns itself with values in action.

The energy we speak of is the energy of the leader that helps release the company energy.

Energy is released by ambition to achieve. Ambition refining to aspiration, the excessive energy makes one a leader.

The leader's aspiration identifying with the aspiration of the corporation raises him to the level of a leader in the company at the primary level of energy.

The size of his leadership is determined by the size of his organised personality, its aspiration, its determination and its usable skills for the production of the company. His rise is determined by its capacity for constant growth.

Energy next enters the phase of force by his direction.

It is decided by his determination, not individual, but collective.

His own determination drives the determination of others in the measure it identifies with the determination of the company.

Energy and determination convert themselves into power by passing through the organisation of his own character.

Again in the measure his own character is in tune with the character of the company, he organises the power of the company.

Finally, that power yields results by the collective skills employed by the entire company.

The leader rises with the company's rise if he is in tune with it. To acquire the SKILL that will direct the company power to branch off into company skills that will express through every employee, one must be not only a leader of power, but a skilful leader.

Ambition becomes aspiration if ego becomes individual.

A leader who is able to release in everyone an aspiration for the growth of the company must ‘be' in each employee, i.e. he must identify himself with other employees.

The leader's will changes into the company's will when the leader has the strength of will equal to that of the company.

It is the leader who organises the company's force into the company's POWER.

It is done by the company's structure that is character.

Organisation is the character of the company.

He must be one whose character is capable of persuading the company to acquire that organisation which will turn its Force into Power. §

So far, it is creative of energy, force and power.

Now it is no longer a work of fashioning a task of unity.

Here the creation of skill - skill of the company - is apparently the task of dividing the power into various skills.

In fact, it is a higher task of raising the power into skills, as skill-formation is a divided task based on an invisible unity.

The leader is one who grows with the growth of the company.

One can grow individually, which is a great task.

One can help an organisation to grow, a greater task.

To grow with the growth of the company, one has to dissolve his individuality and allow it to reform itself as the company's individuality.

Gandhiji who distinguished himself as a leader among the world leaders failed in this role when Mountbatten was on the scene.

Churchill, who magnificently led England, failed to persuade them to re-elect him as their leader.

Such a leadership that grows with the growth of the company has not yet emerged in politics.

Should corporations create such a leader, it will be a forerunner to such political leadership.

To do that, the corporate leadership should acquire a political dimension.

JP Morgan had it as far as monetary management was concerned.

Burgo, Mountjoy in Scarborough Family were really unaware of their good looks.

Jim has caught sight of this age-old truth in the lives of companies in terms of empirical facts.

The same idea is rephrased in terms of accomplishment as "Accomplishment is for the desireless."

Scientific search is valid for one who is in the plane of physicality and who exercises his thinking at that level. It is the physical mind.

For one who has risen above, it will be to reinvent the wheel.

To know things from above and confirm them by data is the right process.

Men had beards and long hair during the Vedic period because there was no need for shaving or perhaps the means.

Kural declared two thousand years ago that that does not qualify one for spirituality.

Still, the atavism may assert through various local circumstances.

Where in this continuum is one going to place himself or whether he is going to leave it to circumstances is again another question.

In the measure the inner can choose and it is free to overrule the atavism of the outer, one finds work deciding itself in his life. It is true of forms and attitudes.

Form touches the beard.

Attitude expresses oblivion of one's endowment.

In either case, accomplishment demands oblivion on this score.

It is just like the accomplished original thinker correcting his MS often, while the finished scholar writes without errors.

Jim says what makes a man right has more to do with character than with specific knowledge.

- It is common misconception that an educated man is a good man. It is a universal superstition that an educated person is an intelligent man.

- The truth is intelligence, goodness, character, capacity are separate endowments unconnected with each other.

- It is a pity that a research of this high level grapples with such elementary ideas. Perhaps they have the empirical value. Whether any research has yet established them is not clear.

- Should any varsity come forward to do extensive research in management, my first preference will be to create a hundred scales and accompanying measurement. My next preference is to take a list of common sense truisms as the one above and examine its empirical validity. Further, there is a greater work as to how to use them to practical advantage. Scales and measurements vary in their use according to the field of application.

- Subtle indices for each can be discovered and tested for their validity.

Science and art dexterously combine in the human temperament in such an attempt. Even in this index, there are grades. Also the same index can indicate the opposites if differently read. Duryodhana stuffing the room with straw and Yudhisthira lighting an incense stick to fill the room is a story in the Mahabharata.

My purpose here is a few:

First, to show Jim's findings are valuable.

Not only because they are popular, but in themselves they are valuable.

He has seen their value, but communicates them partially.

His communication is not entire, as he knows it not.

His communication can work, not because it is full, but it implies some essential parts.

I would like to show the missing parts and how to include them.

Secondly, what he laboriously reached, I want to show can be reached with no labour.

This inversion includes the implied aspects as they become explicit.

Thirdly, one needs to know this as a method for other things also.

It is a method of moving away from Force into the domain of Being.

Whether you reach his wayor our way, it does not work till it is perfect at its level. It is the unit.

The unit, I want to show next, cannot be expanded by extending the method.

It can be extended by expanding the personality, not character.

Character is for the force, personality is for the Being.

Even the personality is of the force, only the Person belongs to Being.

But the personality cannot be a bar as character is.

Personality can open the door into Being.

Human choice is of value at this point.

That choice expresses as attitudes.

Attitudes are employed as strategy.

Silent will acts when we withdraw the mind from the work.

Some can withdraw, others cannot.

Those who cannot can be taught how to withdraw.

When they give up out of frustration, they know, it works.

It means the vital has ‘learnt' it will not get the result.

The frustration or the vital learning that it will not work happens here by outer circumstances. That is how the vital learns.

The vital can be made to learn as it has a mind, a vital mind.

To do so, the client must learn the concept and believe in it.

This is mental learning, not vital learning.

Beyond this, there are two things, 1) the vital's previous experiences where, by chance, it has seen the Silent will working. It is not enough but in vital learning, it gives us a starting point. 2) Now we can lay out experiments where the vital can voluntarily forget. Small events will lend themselves for this experiment and will not tease or dodge the mind. When those experiments succeed, vital learning from past experiences will be strengthened by experiments laid out by planning. They can be raised in importance till we arrive at the required results. The process of learning consists of:

1) Clear concept formation;

2) Mind understanding the arguments, removing the obstacles from the vital learning;

3) Mind learns from concepts and arguments;

4) Vital learns from experiences (vital sensation).

For this we use the past and present experiences.The body's learning is most powerful. It may not be necessary to go to forty crores.Maybe it is for 4000 or 400 crores.

5) Body learns from physical sensation.

6) Using the past positive experience as well as present experiments we can do this.

In moving from concept to vital sensation, we pass through 1) a reversal and 2) the subtle planes in Mind and vital.

Jim cannot know this, but his earnestness by implication brings the benefit of these two in a major way. Hence the result.

Body is a vast topic even in business accomplishment.

Therefore let us put it aside for the present.

One who responds from body does not expand his present operations but as businessmen moved to investment banking, he will move to a higher plane of activity. Presently it will be inconceivable. It happened to Ambani, a stockbroker, becoming a manufacturer.

To study the stages Ambani passed through is not permissible in Indian conditions.

All that I describe will be there. Whether Jim's data contains it, I do not know.

About twenty points are there on the list. Each is NOT a point of efficiency of force, but a point of expansion of Being. As Silent will can be given through training - it can be done to anyone at any level - each of these twenty points can be trained as a personal endowment. They are

All these 30 items have one thing in common; still they are essentially different. In fact, each is unique in every way. So far, it can be called Phase I. In the second phase (which is far out of anyone's way) scales and measurements can be developed to implement each of these thirty (they can be expanded to 50 or 100). The whole world can readily accept it as new products are accepted. To tell a company they are on point 31 on a scale of 100 and SHOW exactly what they should do to move to NO. 32 is something that will be readily acceptable. It will offer not double but five or ten- fold expansion.

Ä It is this trait Gorbachev exhibited. His betrayal of the police state is service to mankind.

If you do the work quickly time gets abridged. Quickness can be out of hurry and inefficiency or it can be because of efficiency. When you become efficient, time and space are abridged, level of energy rises, organizational energy rises in quality and complexity.

The successiveness, because of great speed, appears as instantaneousness. Theoretically, when it reaches its peak, it becomes timeless.

You know the difference between parts and the whole. In between is the sum of the parts, which contains all the parts but is not the whole. The whole belongs to another dimension which must be incident on this dimension.

In USA during WW II, 3 month ship repair job was reduced to 10 hours. By such efficiency, you can only build a ship.

Efficiency can save time, appear to move toward timelessness, but it can never take you to simultaneous time.

Theme of the paper is how to create that unit - a unit in simultaneous time - not a unit of time or timelessness.

McKinsey, Peters, Drucker can never become consultants, but Collins has the potential to do so.

No other British PM could have become a Churchill and saved Britain and the world. No US president who followed FDR could be an FDR. They belong to a different category.

The UNIT is like the role of Ashram or Auroville viz a viz society

The UNIT is like a token act, but the emphasis in token act is on result.

The UNIT is for the purposes of understanding the whole.

Theory from Data

March 25, 2006

Theory is of the Mind. Data are physical facts. To deduce a theory from data is theoretically invalid. The right sequence is data can be called upon to confirm a Theory.

The simple reason is the sum of the parts is NOT the whole, and can be anything but the whole.

Data is a collection of veterans. Theory is Napoleon.

Those who relied on data expected socialist revolution in Great Britain. The Revolution not only eluded Britain, but evaded all industrialised nations and then chose a very backward, rural Russia.

Reliance on data is like relying on the past to know the future. The future in 1960 never disclosed itself to those armed with all the sociological statistics.All the scientific inquiries of Europe could not let her know the birth of America across the Atlantic. Knowledge is wider than the methods of scientific inquiry can ever handle.It is not the information from data that made the world recently reverse its attitude to the swelling population.

Jim Collins is vastly successful not because of his collection of data but because of the insight he has into the arrangement of data.

American shipbuilding industry demonstrated that efficiency can rise four hundred times. Jim has again demonstrated it in management. It is efficiency. What JP Morgan did in 1907 was not due to efficiency but arose out of the power that accrued to him because of insight, a penetrating vision into the social structure through the movements of money.

Lakshmi Mittal has demonstrated the heights of success to which perfect accounting can take a Man. It is again the efficiency of a single component.

The world was earnestly observing Darwin and others studying and bought out Origin of Species on the day of publication. His theory has survived a hundred years. Still it cannot explain Man. As China was disturbed 2000 year ago and He says she will be equally disturbed again in 2000 years, data cannot deliver the goods. Even the Spirit of India that was partial failed there.

No amount of observation and collection of data could have led anyone to conceive that it is the earth that goes around the sun. If a method fails even once, it is an invalid method.

In any Sherlock Holmes story, the police, the victim, the onlookers and readers invariably arrive at a rational conclusion based on available data. Holmes reaches another conclusion.

It is worthwhile enumerating the discoveries of fundamental scientific principles from the accumulated data.

No one other than the parents are posted with all the data possible about a child's behaviour. In periods of transition, the parents going wrong are in the majority. It is more true about husband and wife. In a famous movie towards the end of it, the hero tells his wife that he may not understand her even if he lived with her for 90 years. There can be no better field where the data, conscious as well a subconscious, are known to each other in a greater measure. It is a common comment of spouses that, "I can never know what he will do next." Intuition never fails, nor insight.

No poet, artist, great musician, or creative political leader has ever reached his goal working from data.

Data is of the known; our search is for the unknown. To look for guidance about the unknown in the known is a reductio ad absurdum.

Construction of a theory from the data alone can often lead to an absurd result as the converse proves to be often.

The conclusions of Jim Collins about humility and determination are themselves a stretch from the data if we consider the same cases from the exponents of Money or Market. Technology can be said to be the real cause of the success of some of these companies. Moving away from the concrete inputs of Technology, Market, Money to invisible ingredients such as humility and determination itself shows that one needs to move away from the visible Data to the invisible ideals, values, etc.

An analysis of Jim's right conclusion will reveal at many points the inversion of cause and effect.

Future Education Conference

A one-day conference on Future Education in India was organized at Anandha Inn, Pondicherry on January 28, 2018 to consider the changes needed in our schools and to examine successful strategies that are already being applied by schools in India and overseas.

Future Education Conference

A one-day conference on Future Education in India was organized at Anandha Inn, Pondicherry on January 28, 2018 to consider the changes needed in our schools and to examine successful strategies that are already being applied by schools in India and overseas.